F1 Azerbaijan GP: Oscar Piastri Battles His Way To Second Victory As McLaren Leads Championship After a Decade

The streets of Baku threw many surprises at F1 fans and delivered a rather surprising set of results. After a qualifying that saw Charles Leclerc take pole by a healthy margin while Lando Norris, the driver second in the championship, got knocked out in Q1 itself. Then, in the race, Oscar Piastri managed to wrestle the lead away from Charles Leclerc and got his second win in Formula 1. Since this time around there was no drama around team orders and Piastri won it through pure pace and racecraft, it actually felt like a race win. A late and somewhat bizarre collision between Carlos Sainz and Sergio Perez promoted George Russell to the final place on the podium.

The weekend turned out to be fantastic for McLare, despite a bit of a rocky start. They were looking like the team to beat, on the basis of their recent run of form. However, Lando Norris fell at the first hurdle in qualifying, only managing P17 while Max Verstappen qualified way higher in sixth. Piastri was second in qualifying and could not take the lead from Leclerc at the start. In fact, Leclerc had pulled a six-second gap at one point. However, once the Monegasque pitted for hard tyres, things started to change. The car was not as happy on the white-walled rubber and Piastri pulled out a majestic divebomb into Turn 1 on Lap 20. Once the lead got away from Leclerc, he never got it back. Despite multiple efforts, Piastri did not give in to the pressure and displayed some amazing racecraft.

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On the other side of the papaya garage, Norris was promoted to P15 at the start of the race as Lewis Hamilton and Esteban Ocon started from the pit lane due to taking additional components outside their allocation. Then, he steadily carved his way through the field and even managed to finish ahead of Verstappen in P4. He even kept the extra point for the fastest lap, reducing the championship gap to 59 points. This result has now put McLaren in the lead of the Constructors’ Championship after a gap of 10 long years. 

A big talking point of the race is the collision between Perez and Sainz. Perez had finally had a strong weekend and was set to get a podium after a drought of 11 races, before the unfortunate incident. On the second last lap, while trying to overtake Leclerc into Turn 1, he was overtaken by Sainz. Then on the straight, the two had the slightest of contact and got tangled, ending up in the barrier. Thankfully, both drivers walked away from the incident.

Another team that would be very happy after the race is Williams. Both their drivers finished in the points, bagging their team a total of 10 points. Franco Colapinto, the rookie who replaced Logan Sargeant mid-season, scored his very first F1 points by finishing P8, one place behind his teammate Alexander Albon. In fact, the other rookie on the track this weekend, Oliver Bearman, also managed to finish P10, scoring a point for Haas. Bearman has now become the first driver in the history of the sport to score points for two different teams in his first two races.

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Once again, Russell was there to pick up the podium pieces when drivers further up the road collided. His teammate, Lewis Hamilton did not have the best of weekends. While Hamilton qualified in P7, the penalties meant he would start from the pitlane. Unlike Norris, however, Hamilton could not make the same climb through the pack and would not have got any points, if not for the crash.
Stake, Alpine, and RB finished towards the tail-end of the grid but did not get any points. Yuki Tsunoda even picked up severe damage after an incident with Lance Stroll during the early part of the race. The damage was enough for RB to retire the car. Stroll’s teammate, Fernando Alonso, had a much better day though, finishing P6.